Android continues to improve its market share

07/05/2014

Android is continuing to grow its share of the market for smartphone users, largely thanks to the number of new converts to the devices, who are typically hoovered up by the range of phones availability with the operating system installed.

Google's operating system has long been in control of the market for smartphones, largely thanks to the range of different handsets from different companies that make use of it. All of Sony, LG, Samsung and other smaller providers load their devices with Android versions as standard.

This has helped to give it the edge over the eternally popular Apple iOS system, which suffers in terms of market share thanks to the fact it is only offered on the company's own iPhones.

In the first quarter of this year, reports from ABI Research have shown, Android commanded the lion's share of the market, with some 150 million users worldwide on Android devices.

This is compared to Apple, which takes second place - if we exclude Android's Open Source Project (AOSP) - with some 37.4 million worldwide. Windows Phone, in third place, has only six million users as of the first quarter of the year.

In the last quarter, Google has upped its Android OS market share from 39 per cent to 44 per cent, and ABI Research said that this is down largely to the number of people buying smartphones for the first time.

There are still 229 million people across the globe who are using basic OS phones as opposed to smartphones, but when these people choose to upgrade, they invariably choose an Android device.

In the quarter, five per cent of the people using basic phones made the switch to smartphones, with virtually all of these being hoovered up by Google's OS.